What is Kastom? Kastom is a pidgin word (Bislama/English) used to refer to traditional culture, including religion, economics, art and magic in Melanesia. The word derives from the Australian English pronunciation of custom. Kastom is mostly not written only passed down through teachings and stories.
WHY DO MANY INDIGENOUS PEOPLE OF VANUATU VIEW "KASTOM" AS IMPORTANT? Christian missions are often characterized as a physical expression of Western colonial power, institutions that were resisted by indigenous people in various ways. In Vanuatu, while there was indeed dramatic resistance to mission incursion, the success of Christianity in many places (for not everyone converted) developed from a series of complex entanglements between indigenous Melanesians and Christian missionaries. This is apparent in oral traditions and in the physical remains relating to mission encounters. Indigenous ni-Vanuatu see the archaeological remains of mission sites as an integral part of their heritage, rather than as relics of a foreign colonial past. This tendency relates to other aspects of missionary heritage as well, including museum collections and sacred texts. The historical archaeology of missions in Vanuatu and beyond can be best understood through the lens of colonial entanglement, destabilizing categorical oppositions such as colonizer–colonized, foreign–indigenous, and power–resistance.
WHAT ARE SOME FACTORS INVOLVED IN WHY IT'S DIFFICULT FOR MELANESIAN INDIGENOUS PEOPLES TO PRESERVE AND LIVE THEIR TRADITIONAL WAYS OF LIFE?​ Melanesian culture, the beliefs and practices of the indigenous peoples of the ethnogeographic group of Pacific Islands known as Melanesia. From northwest to southeast, the islands form an arc that begins with New Guinea (the western half of which is called Papua and is part of Indonesia, and the eastern half of which comprises the independent country of Papua New Guinea) and continues through the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu (formerly New Hebrides), New Caledonia, Fiji, and numerous smaller islands. The Andesite Line, a geological feature of extreme volcanic and earthquake activity, separates Melanesia from Polynesia in the east and from Micronesia in the north, along the Equator; in the south, Melanesia is bounded by the Tropic of Capricorn and Australia. Melanesia’s name was derived from the Greek melas ‘black’ and nesoi ‘islands’ because of the dark skin of its inhabitants. In the early 21st century the population of Melanesia was approximately 10 million.
